Let us hereby proclaim today an official Day of Apology.
Here’s your chance to free yourself from all the little guilts that gather in your heart like stones. Things you’ve done. Or haven’t done. Make the list. Lighten your heart’s load. Say you’re sorry now.
Why today?
For starters, because I’m looking for a way to apologize to anyone whose e-mail I haven’t answered yet.
I like getting e-mail. It can be entertaining, moving, illuminating. I answer lots of it every day. Still, like snow that falls too fast for the snowplow, the messages keep piling up.
So even though an apology that offers no further remedy is just half a cupcake, I want to sincerely say to anyone whose e-mail has gone unanswered: Thank you. For your time. Your words. I read what you wrote and gave it some thought even if I haven’t written back.
E-mail inadequacies–I’m hardly unique in this failure–aren’t the only thing a person might atone for on the Day of Apology.
You could apologize for forgetting the birthday of someone who always remembers yours.
(Honest, Joe, I didn’t forget. I just forgot to call.)
You could apologize for your impatience.
(Mothers have to forgive you, don’t they? And maybe that cashier-in-training didn’t notice.)
You could apologize for the phone calls, the ones you know you should initiate and the ones you’ve taken too long to return.
(Thanks for putting up with me, Jer.)
Instead of apologizing for not sending that thing you said you’d mail, you could rustle up an envelope and stamp.
“You know,” says a friend, “we Jews already have a day like this. A season, really. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. Leading up to it, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, you are supposed to apologize to everyone you know whom you might have hurt or offended during the year.
“I’d apologize,” she went on, “for not being nicer to my parents. I’d apologize to my kids for losing patience sometimes over trivial things. I’d apologize to myself for not being more calmly assertive when necessary, and for not being nicer to myself–not taking enough time to think, to rest, to exercise and to nurture myself.”
When I ask people what they’d apologize for, they tend to mutter that some things are too dark to mention. What they mention openly are the routine acts of negligence that sometimes feel like cruelty. It’s often the little things that weigh a conscience down.
You’re sorry that you didn’t pay better attention to a friend in the midst of a divorce.
You neglected to say “thank you” or “please” or “good job.” Or “sorry.”
“I would apologize to all the people I come across every day–the neighbor, the barista, the parking-lot guy–for failing to slow down a little,” says one woman. “I feel like I too often am so focused on my tasks ahead and on efficiency that I don’t even take the time to exchange normal chatter in everyday life. It turns out that I miss it. It’s what holds people together.”
Apologies due can be like the e-mail inbox. The backlog may stretch too far back to be handled easily.
“My high school reunion has put me in mind of the slights I inflicted on boys my age (in grade school and junior high mainly) who wanted to be friends with me but whom I deemed unworthy of favor,” says one man when I solicited his apology list. “Maybe they weren’t cool. Maybe they looked or sounded or acted funny. I feel true shame at having added my jot to the cup of human misery.”
A fine sentiment, but it should be noted that regret is not the same as apology. Apology is regret in action.
On the Day of Apology, it’s good to consider ways you might improve so that apology is less necessary. But beware of attaching promises to your mea culpas.
Promises must be tendered carefully. The unmet promise and its less-demanding relative, unmet expectation, are the leading causes of apology.
No need to dump more stones in the heart.
